Download Straight White Men - State Theatre Company

state ed
by Young Jean Lee
Frequent coarse language
Loud & explicit rap music will be played pre-show, but will finish before the show begins
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Index .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Cast & Creatives .............................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Writer .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 5
Synopsis ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 9
Plot .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Director............................................................................................................................................................................................ 12
Assistant Director/Actor .......................................................................................................................................................... 13
Actor Profile ................................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Characters ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 17
Themes ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 18
Interesting Reading .................................................................................................................................................................... 20
Designer .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 22
Set Design ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 23
Costume Design ............................................................................................................................................................................ 24
Essay Questions............................................................................................................................................................................ 25
Tables ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 26
References ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 28
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Director
Nescha Jelk
Set & Costume Designer
Victoria Lamb
Lighting Designer
Ben Hughes
Composer
Busty Beatz
Accent Coach
Simon Stollery
Assistant Director
Alexis West
Fight Choreographer
Duncan Graham
CAST
Ed
Roger Newcombe
Jake
Christ Pitman
Drew
Lucas Stibbard
Matt
Hugh Parker
Stage Hand in Charge
Alexis West
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YOUNG JEAN LEE
Is a writer, director, and filmmaker who has been called, “the most
adventurous downtown playwright of her generation,” by the New York Times
and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America,” by Time Out New
York. She has written and directed ten shows in New York with Young Jean
Lee's Theater Company, and toured her work to over thirty cities around the
world.
Her plays have been published by Theatre Communications Group (Songs of
the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays; The Shipment and Lear; and
We’re Gonna Die) and by Samuel French (Three Plays by Young Jean Lee). She
is currently under commission from Lincoln Center Theater and the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival, and has written a screenplay commission for Plan B/Paramount Pictures.
Her first short film, Here Come the Girls, was presented at The Locarno International Film Festival,
Sundance Film Festival, and BAMcinemaFest. In 2013, she released her debut album, We’re Gonna Die,
with her band, Future Wife.
Lee is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, a Prize in Literature from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Doris Duke Artist
Residency, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, and the ZKB Patronage Prize of the Zürcher
Theater Spektakel. She has also received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New
York State Council on the Arts, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Creative
Capital, the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the
Arts Presenters/Ford Foundation Creative Capacity Grant, the Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, and
the New England Foundation for the Arts: National Theater Project Award.
ABOUT YOUNG JEAN LEE
Lee’s work proactively tackles identity politics and detonates cultural stereotypes - of Asian Americans,
African Americans, Native Americans, feminists and Caucasian men.
Young Jean Lee is a Korean-American playwright, director and filmmaker and Artistic Director of Young
Jean Lee’s Theatre Company. She was born in South Korea and moved to the United Sates when she
was two years old, growing up in Washington. She attended college at UC Berkeley, majoring in English.
After college she studied Shakespeare for six years before moving to New York to become a playwright.
Watch the following YouTube clip of Young Jean Lee talking about how she became a playwright.
I AM THEATRE: Young Jean Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Drjx7m-cDBE
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INTERVIEW WITH YOUNG JEAN LEE
(Excerpts from interviews for City Mag & State News)
Could you describe the creative process behind Straight White Men (from conception to stage)?
With all my shows, I cast the show first, and then write in collaboration with the performers, my artistic
team, and workshop audiences. Normally we talk about stuff in rehearsal, and then, based on what we
talk about, I go home and write. I come in with whatever I’ve written, and that’s when everyone pitches
in.
Straight White Men was a little different, because I didn’t know how to write naturalistic dialogue. The
actors were a huge part of writing this piece for me. Particularly important in the early writing stages
was the ability to observe the speech and behavior patterns of straight white men.
I developed the script with the New York actors and students at Brown University, where I did the
show’s first workshop. I had both casts do a lot of improvisation that I built the skeleton around. Then I
replaced the bulk of those improvs with my own dialogue. The actors helped me to make sure that the
dialogue sounded natural and true to how they would speak. And as the characters evolved, the actors
also helped to make sure each moment of dialogue continued to feel appropriate for their emotional
trajectory over the course of the show. As always, the cast and I picked over every word of the script
along with my dramaturg, Mike Farry, and my associate director, Emilyn Kowaleski. We were
constantly asking, “How can we make this line stronger?” and we would all brainstorm. Throughout the
entire process, because the actors hadn’t spent a ton of time thinking about straight white male identity,
we opened the conversation to other collaborators of diverse identities and backgrounds.
I had never really been at a venue like The Public before, where they have a more traditional theater
going audience, one that is richer than I’m used to. I didn’t want anyone from my audience to come to
the play and feel like they didn’t belong there. I tried to create a pre-show environment with music that
would make someone like me feel comfortable and at home (loud hip-hop with raunchy lyrics by female
artists). And I think it worked. Wherever we’ve done the show, some audience members, definitely not
all, but a lot of them, have gotten very upset, because they didn’t feel comfortable in that environment.
They felt that the music was aggressive toward them, and when they tried to make it stop and no one
would comply with their requests, they got extremely angry. It really highlighted the privilege of our
audiences. And I added a transgender/queer non-straight-white-male character to be the announcer at
the beginning of the show and to direct the transitions (which are lit) to show that a non-straight-whitemale was running the show.
Can you talk me through the process of crafting the character of Matt?
When the play was in its early stages, I was in a room full of students—women, people of color, and
queer people - a very diverse room. And they started talking very harshly about straight white men. I
said, “Okay. Now I know all the things you don’t like about straight white men. Why don’t you give me a list
of the things you wished straight white men would do that would make you hate them less?” So they told
me all these things, I wrote down the whole list, and then I wrote that character. And they all hated him
because he was a loser. For example, everyone at the first workshop was like, “I want a straight white
man to sit down and shut up. I want him to take a back seat, to take a supporting role. I don’t want him to
be aggressive. I want him to be passive and sit there and take it. I want him to listen. I don’t want him
taking the head role or the biggest job or to be going after the biggest stuff. I want him in a supporting role
to me.” And nobody wanted to date that guy or be friends with that guy or hire that guy! Do we actually
want that? No, not according to our value system. And that’s what made me realize that, in spite of all
these social-justice values, in our peer group, being a loser is worse than being an a**hole. It kind of
revealed our continuing investment in the patriarchy. So that became interesting to me in the play, and
this character became a litmus test for the audience.
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You are known for writing about topics that make you feel uncomfortable. Are you able to
explain this in context to Straight White Men?
When starting a play, I ask myself, "What's the last show in the world I would ever want to make?" Then I
force myself to make it. I do this because going out of my comfort zone compels me to challenge my
assumptions and find value in unexpected places. I feel a lot of resistance towards the idea of identitypolitics art, which is why I make so much of it. For Straight White Men, I asked myself, “What’s the last
identity I would ever want to make an identity-politics show about?”
I had never written a straight linear play before and had no interest in doing so, but I saw the traditional
three-act structure as the “straight white male” of theatrical forms, or the form that has historically
been used to present straight white male narratives as universal. And I thought it would be interesting
to explore the limits of that form at the same time as its content - to bring the two together into one big
nightmare.
Your play could be considered a reaction to the often reductive depictions of people of colour in
media today? In essence, are you turning the tables?
No definitely not. Since we’re dealing with naturalism, I based these characters on interviews with
countless straight white men. At many points I objected, “No, this seems too stereotypical”, but I was
assured that the depiction was spot-on for many men. There are definitely men who don’t identify with
these characters, but the majority of straight white male audience members have told me that they
identified with the basic behaviours. People have only recently started thinking of straight white
maleness as an identity the way they would think of Asian female-ness as an identity. For a long time,
straight white men were always considered the “default human” or “universal hero”. Now they are
starting to get slapped with this label of “straight white man”, and they don’t like it. So they are just now
starting to experience this thing that minorities have been experiencing for generations. I think I’m
turning the tables in a way just by exploring this.
Hilton Als said that your work is about bodies- about how we inhabit them and how
the perceptions of that habitation are misshapen by external forces. How did you inhabit the
body of the straight white man when writing the play?
In some ways, I feel like I already do inhabit straight white male identity, since it’s still dominant in our
culture. Working on Straight White Men really prevented me from feeling totally self-righteous as an
Asian female. I mean, “I’m a woman of color! I’m not a person of privilege! I’m doing great things for the
world just by totally selfishly pursuing what I want, because I’m making the world more diverse!” A
straight white guy can’t do that. He can’t say, “I’m making the world a more diverse place by just doing
whatever I want”—there are expectations on him that require him to do something. So working on this
show has sort of forced me to confront my own hypocrisy and challenge my sense of how committed I
am to social justice—how big a hypocrite I am. To some extent, this play is a thought experiment in how
I would cope if I woke up tomorrow in the body of a straight white man.
How have various different audiences in different places received the work?
Well, there are certain jokes that don’t translate when we go out of the U.S. For example, in Straight
White Men, the characters sing this ironically racist version of the theme song to an American musical
number. We just did the show in Athens, Greece, where nobody knew the song or the musical, so that
got no response at all. But things like that are pretty rare. It’s usually just cultural references that people
don’t understand.
You write comedies, but have said that you want this play to feel unsatisfying? Why is that? Is
that just part of calling attention to privilege- identifying with something but also seeing the
faults in it?
It has to do mostly with destroying complacency. I don’t like it when people think that they know
everything and they’re right and they are satisfied with themselves. One of the things I believe in most
is self-critique and self-awareness. So every show is a challenge to myself as well as the audience. What
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I love about Straight White Men is that the audience laughs through most of it, and when it’s over they
tell me they were left with a horrible feeling that irked them because they couldn’t precisely define
what made them feel that way. I wanted the play to end up being a fundamentally unsatisfying
experience because the last thing I wanted to do was make a show dealing with privilege that left both
the audience and me feeling satisfied.
You’re very specific about the pre-show music in the stage directions why is that?
I didn’t want anyone from my audience to come to the play and feel like they didn’t belong there. I tried
to create a pre-show environment with music that would make someone like me feel comfortable and at
home. And I think it worked.
The downside was that some audience members—definitely not all, but a lot of them—were very upset,
because they didn’t feel comfortable in that environment. They felt that the music was aggressive
toward them, and when they tried to make it stop and no one would comply with their requests, they
got extremely angry.
© 2016 Kate Pardey
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Straight White Men tells the story of the widowed Ed who welcomes home his three middle aged sons
for Christmas. The eldest Matt has moved back in after losing his way, while life also holds its challenges
for younger brothers Jake and Drew. They enjoy brotherly banter and nostalgic re-hashing of childhood
pranks. But amongst the hijinks and smart-arse repartee, they must confront a problem that even a
happy family can’t solve: when identity matters, and privilege is problematic, what is the real value of
being a straight, white man?
© 2016 Kate Pardey
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ACT ONE
CHRISTMAS EVE
It’s the Christmas holiday season. Jake and Drew have returned home for the holidays. Their brother
Matt, once the bright star among them, has moved back in with his dad. This arrangement pleases the
father, Ed, who admits that he has never gotten used to living alone since his wife died. All of the
brothers are unmarried; Jake is divorced, Drew has had trouble committing, and Matt is too shy and
self-effacing to even go on a date
Jake is playing a video game and Drew, who is bored, is antagonizing him by repeatedly singing “I’m a
little airplane”. Frustrated Jake attacks Drew, only stopping when Drew begs. Without anything else to
do, they find the politically correct game their mother made over the board game, ‘Monopoly’, called
“Privilege.”
Matt and Ed arrive home with a Christmas tree. Jake is annoyed by the fake tree, “What’s the point of
having a Christmas tree if it’s not a real tree?” Then Ed breaks it to Jake that he’s not wearing the Santa
suit this year, his brothers’ tease, “Look at him! He looks like he’s gonna cry!”
Conversation ensues as Ed asks Jake about his kids, and Drew talks about his teaching job and his new
novel. Comparing himself to his brothers, Matt mocks his current temp job that his father got for him.
Unperturbed the brothers continue to taunt one another, recovering some of Drew’s early writing from
his teenage years, with titles such as, “Why I hate people” and “F*** Humanity” club. The attention
shifts to Matt and his teenage idea of starting a school called “Matt’s School for Young Revolutionaries.”
The Chinese take-out arrives and Ed forces the brothers to put on their pajamas and squeeze onto the
couch to eat, because its tradition. As they reminisce, Matt starts to cry. The men are confused and don’t
know how to react. Ed puts his arm around Matt.
ACT TWO
CHRISTMAS DAY
Jake, wearing a Santa suit, and Drew are fixing the Christmas lights and decorating the tree, discussing
what’s going on with Matt. Ed and Matt enter. Jake gets the pie that Matt had made and they all sit down
and eat. Drew tells the others about his therapy and how it has helped talk through the negativity he
had as a child. Drew asks if Matt had ever thought of doing therapy. There is a painfully awkward
silence, before Jake and Ed attempt to shift the conversation. Matt exits the room.
Drew admits his worries, “It’s shi**y to pretend nothing’s wrong when someone you love is unhappy!” Ed
confides that Matt’s student loans are crippling and that is the reason he moved back home to try and
pay them off.
They all know that Matt is extremely intelligent, but they don’t understand why Matt’s not using his
brain to get a better job. Drew steers the conversation to wanting a family and Ed suggests that Matt
would be a wonderful father. Jake disagrees that they should all want the same values, “He should get a
better job, get married, have kids. All that self-actualizer cr@p. Just because that’s our thing doesn’t mean
it has to be everyone’s thing”. Matt re-enters the room as the discussion heats up.
Drew and Jake argue over Matt’s reluctance to pursue him ambitions and be happy, “Jake, I know this
may be a hard concept for you to grasp, but what makes me happy is using my abilities in service to
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something bigger than myself”. Jake questions Drew’s beliefs of how being another white guy in
leadership can make a difference in this world, “Our success is the problem, not the solution!”
Fed up with the arguing, Ed leaves for bed. Matt and Drew begin to follow, but Jake puts on Christmas
carols, turning it up loudly hoping that his brothers return. He pours himself a shot of whiskey, and as
Drew re-enters they begin to dance. Matt and Ed re-enter, all whipping out their finest dance moves.
ACT THREE
THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
Drew is fast asleep on the sofa, wearing the same clothes as the night before. Matt is tidying away the
empty bottles. Jakes enters after his morning run. He sees Drew on the couch, grabs a towel from the
bathroom and holds it over Drew’s mouth until he wakes up with a muffled yell.
Drew struggles with his hangover as Matt and Jake tease him by making irritating voices and screeching
noises before pouring a glass of water over his face. Upset, Drew asks Matt to read him a story like he
used to when they were children. Matt begins to read him Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy.
The men eat their breakfast while discussing Matt’s choice of movie A Man for All Seasons. Ed tells his
sons that he is reading a book about a CEO who grew up in the projects and made a list of all the things
he most wanted in life. He asks his sons if they had ever made a list. Matt replies that the most
important thing is the three men that stand before him. Saddened by Matt’s situation, Ed offers to pay
off his loans, but Matt declines the offer.
Jake thinks Matt’s ‘problem’ is that he doesn’t sell himself, “Today, it’s all about who you are and how
you’re perceived, as opposed to what you can actually do. You have to find a way to convince people of your
specialness—that you’re the best of the best.” Ed decides to conduct a fake interview where it becomes
clear that Matt struggles to ‘sell himself.’ Jake shows him how it’s done, resulting in another family feud.
Jakes eventually understands Matt saying, “A white guy’s pretty hard-pressed to explain why the world
needs him to succeed. So Matt’s trying to stay out of the way.” Ed doesn’t understand Matt’s reluctance to
be part of life, so he ask Matt to move out as he can no longer do anything to help him. “I love you so
much. I’ve never done anything but love you. I look at you now and don’t even recognise you.”
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NESCHA JELK
Nescha is the Resident Director at State Theatre Company. She graduated from
the Flinders Drama Centre directing course in 2010 with First Class Honours
and a University Medal. In 2010 she won Helpmann Academy’s Bendigo and
Adelaide Bank Award.
For State Theatre Company, Nescha has directed Gorgon, Volpone, Krapp’s Last
Tape, Othello, Jesikah and Random. Other directing credits include Deluge (Tiny
Bricks) as part of 2016 Adelaide Festival of Arts, Alice and Peter Grow Up (Milk
Theatre Collective), Hamlet (The Actor’s Folio), and Sepia (RiAus) which was
awarded the 2012 Adelaide Fringe Tour Ready Award.
Nescha has worked extensively as an assistant director for numerous companies including State
Theatre Company, Eleventh Hour, Brink Productions, Griffin Theatre Company, Belvoir, Bell
Shakespeare Company and Sydney Theatre Company.
INTERVIEW WITH NESCHA JELK
Why did you want to do this play?
Young Jean Lee was really interested in the fact that for a long time, straight white men haven't had a
label, and suddenly they have had the label of 'straight white men' slapped on them. Using ideals from a
diverse group of people, she created the character of Matt, who was then branded a loser. What Young
Jean Lee realised from this, is that while we may want straight white men to essentially step aside and
make some room for others to succeed and take high ranking jobs, we still expect and the straight white
men in our own lives to be successful.
This predicament, I think, I really interesting. It's a problem that isn't solved or answered in the play.
Instead, this issue is opened up to the audience for them to discuss. Furthermore, it is really important
that we get to see straight white male characters wrestling with their own privilege and owning the
things that privileged people can feel uncomfortable talking about (and I know this because I am in
many ways privileged).
Lastly, the play is also really funny, so that was another appealing quality of this play!
The deceased mother is mentioned throughout the play. Why is she important to the story?
The mother’s influence resonates through the play and you can see her impact on the three sons. It is
admirable the way she’s tried to raise her boys to understand their privilege, teaching them good values
and how not to become oppressors. However, as adult men, her sons all feel a level of guilt about their
privilege as straight white men, and they're all trying to deal with this or justify this in different ways.
Matt says, “She would say there’s nothing you can do to erase the problem of your own existence. She
would tell me to not despair, and to keep trying to find my way.” I feel that Young Jean Lee is very
empathetic towards these men, demonstrating the impact this has had on the sons.
Tell me about the music at the beginning of the show.
Young Jean Lee's theatre company usually attracts quite diverse, non-privileged audiences. However,
Straight White Men was co-commissioned by a company that traditionally had a more conservative and
privileged audience. The pre-show music features music and explicit lyrics by female rappers played
really loudly. Young Jean Lee’s intention was to make her usual audiences feel comfortable and the
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privileged audiences to feel slightly uncomfortable, switching the usual power balances for those
audiences in the theatre. Furthermore, the role of Stage-Hand in charge is controlling the mechanisms
of the play, reinforcing that this is a story that is told by non-straight-white-men, with an intersectional
feminist gaze on the work.
ALEXIS WEST – Assistant Director/Stage Hand In Charge
Alexis is an Aboriginal writer, director, collaborator and performer in film, theatre
and dance. Her State Theatre Company credits include Assistant Director for Zoo
Story and a directing secondment for King Lear.
She has written and directed plays for No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability,
Karrikarrinya Theatre Collective and Kurruru Youth Arts. Collaborating with
Alirio Zavarce, Rosalba Clemente and Matt Crook on new/multi/theatre/
media/development. Alexis has worked with Vital Statistix ADHOCRACY 2015
Crawl me Blood with Willoh S. Weiland, Halcyon McLeod writing with Philip
Kavanagh.
Alexis worked with SA Writers Centre to help deliver Tarnanthi: Pirrku Warrapina in collaboration with
Art Gallery of South Australia. She has delivered spoken word performances for above-mentioned
event, Dirty Words, Soul Lounge, Al Salam Festival, New Zealand Festival of the Arts and Sydney Writers
Festival.
Alexis has written and directed several short documentary’s for NITV, produced and presented for Arts
& Community program Around the Traps for NITV and been published in several anthologies as well as
having her poetry translated into Polish for ‘Poetiks’.
What is your role as Assistant Director in Straight White Men?
My role as the Assistant Director is to learn, grow and develop as a director. Through this role, I have
the honour to learn the mechanics and magic of seeing words on a page sing on the stage. It has been an
amazing privilege working in the room with Director Nescha Jelk, the four talented actors and the
remarkable creative team.
The insight that I offer as a woman of colour, as a woman who has faced racism and oppression (and
still faces it regularly) I believe brings the 'other' voice into the room. This insight, I hope, offers the
actors a different lens of what it means to face racism and to live in a world of white privilege. Young
Jean Lee's script is insightful, clever, funny and subversive. When we as people of colour state the issues
of oppression and systematic racism that is our lives, we are shut down, told we are victims or to just
get over it. Lee deals with this issue in such a remarkable way, she gives voice of the oppressed to
straight white male characters, therefore making the message more palatable to a predominantly white
audience. This is my view of her work. I think she's brilliant. She's written a satire scrutinising the most
privileged people on this globe.
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What is the importance of the Stage-Hand-In-Charge?
The Stage-Hand-In-Charge has agency to break the fourth wall. To engage with the audience, to
acknowledge First Nation's land and peoples, to welcome them to the space and to tell the audience to
turn their cell phones off or risk being attacked! The Stage-Hand-In-Charge, whilst seemingly given the
role of making the audience feel somewhat welcome, also plays the role of cleaning up the actor's mess
for following acts. Whilst this may be seen as submissive, subservient or demeaning, I feel like it is a
role of empowerment. Why? Because clearly white straight men have made a mess of things and
perhaps it is people of colour that need to be emulated to clean up the mess of this globe. Clean up the
mess of this stage. I don't know. These are my thoughts. I feel empowered within this role.
What are the challenges in making this character something tangible other than a crew
member?
I feel my role is to make people of colour and others feel more comfortable. The challenge is to find a
fine line of making the audience feel welcome and comfortable, but at the same time provoke them to
think and for me, speak, first nations’ language. The character is me... but at the same time I need to
protect myself from the onslaught of whiteness that can overwhelm.
As a black woman I am put under scrutiny by a predominantly white audience and a small amount of
privileged 'others' as I conduct my role as the Stage-Hand-In-Charge. I have the opportunity to have a
voice and then for the rest of the play, I am silenced. I love this quote:
"Lee problematizes the dichotomy between speech and silence by exposing speech as a futile mechanism for
communicating presence. In Western society, we associate speech with visibility and presence and associate
silence with invisibility.” – Clara Osei-Yeboah (The Subversion of White Projections of Blackness in
Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men)
As a woman of colour, I find myself dealing with the dichotomy between speech and
silence continuously. I also have leanings towards introversion which lend itself to my silence
before speaking. Lee has created a role giving agency and voice to a woman of colour or coloured
transgendered human, she then allows them to speak in the most powerful way, with actions.
As Young Jean lee says in the play, “Actions speak louder than words".
Why have you decided to be a part of this play?
It’s an honor to be a part of this play by Young Jean Lee, playing the role of Stage-Hand-In-Charge and
then to be asked to be Assistant Director… I feel that you are hearing my voice and giving me platform
to share it. Thank you.
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HUGH PARKER - Matt
This is Hugh’s first production for State Theatre Company. Previous
credits for La Boite Theatre Company: A Doll’s House, Pale Blue Dot, Julius
Caesar. Previous credits for Queensland Theatre Company include Much
Ado About Nothing, The Seagull, Brisbane, The Pitch, Kelly, Fractions (coproduction with Hothouse Theatre), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ,The Clean
House (co-production with Black Swan State Theatre Company), Betrayal,
25 Down.
Other theatre Credits include Hotel Beche de Mer (The Arts Centre Gold
Coast); 1984 (Shake and Stir Theatre co); The Blind Date Project (Ride On
Theatre); The Thirty Nine Steps (The Byre Theatre St Andrews - UK); Cream of British Comedy (Teenage
Cancer Charity Trust / Steve Coogan - UK); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Royal Shakespeare
Company - UK).
Film credits include Bullets for the Dead, My Mistress, Fatal Honeymoon, Crooked Business, Sinbad and the
Minotaur. Television credits include Hoges, The Family Law, Gallipoli, Secrets and Lies, The Killing Field,
The Strip, Sea Patrol. UK Television credits include Vincent, Casualty, Doctors, Monarch of the Glen II,
EastEnders, Smoke, Jonathan Creek, Broken News, 2 Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, The World
According to Bex, Wild West, 15 Storeys High, Doctors and Nurses, The Office, People Like Us, Beast, The
Peter Principle, I’m Alan Partridge, Black Books, Lucky Jim.
Writing Credits include BBC: Bruiser, The Fast Show ; Channel 4: Comedy Nation. Hugh trained as an
actor at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London.
INTERVIEW WITH HUGH
Tell me about the show.
Straight White Men points at things that make so many people feel 'other'. It's a dissection of the
normal. But the play doesn't point any fingers itself. It asks plenty of questions, including that of the
audience. How you choose to answer them will say an enormous amount about your own privilege, and
what you do with it.
Why did you decide to get involved with this particular piece of work?
I was intrigued by a character who so often lets his silence speak for him. It seems he tosses grenades
into his family's world and looks on to observe how they deal with the explosive effect. The play is an
exercise in making the ordinary, extraordinary and the writing is about as clever and funny as it gets.
What appealed to you about the play?
There is the hope, as an actor, that every project you get involved with will teach you something. From
studying for the audition to rehearsal, this has proved to be the case.
Young Jean Lee created the character of Matt from putting together elements that people wanted
in a Straight White Man. What are the challenges in portraying this character?
Young Jean Lee has been empathetic in her portrayal of straight white men. Her understanding of her
craft allows the audience to be open minded in their response to them. Matt says little, but his silence
speaks volumes. Keeping your concentration is key.
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How have you approached this character or what type of research have you done?
I'm Stanislavsky trained, so it's all about knowing your action or intention. What you want and how you
aim to effect the other person. Young Jean Lee has created a lean text, so everything has purpose.
Anything in the text I felt was operating on several levels, I read up on. The Birth of Tragedy is
referenced, so I read the book and it explained an enormous amount about the structure of the play and
how each of the characters operated.
Many of the audiences dislike the character of Matt, what do you want to tell the audience about
him?
You can't intend to make your character unlikeable. There actions must speak for themselves. Matt does
not have this intention either. He is not assertive or heroic, he takes a humble position of admitting he
knows nothing. And yet this generates dislike. He curbs his straight white man instinct and he is
apparently rebuked for it.
What training have you done to become an actor?
I studied English Literature, Psychology and Theatre Studies before training for three years at the Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art.
© 2016 Kate Pardey
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ED
Ed is the boys’ father. He is a middle class, liberal-leaning traditionalist and a widower. He followed the
traditional values of going to university, getting a secure job, getting married and having kids,
something that he’s tried to instill in his sons. Ed worked as an engineer with one company and he is
charitable through his cheque book. Ed was devoted to his wife, who was a radical feminist and tried to
bring her boys with an awareness of their own privilege, and he misses her dearly.
Ed is kind hearted, loves his boys and wants the best for them. He is well intentioned, but he'd rather
not see problems, or have them easily remedied. He can’t understand Matt’s reluctance to be successful
and as a result, feels that he’s let Matt down as a father.
MATT
Is the eldest son, in his forties. He is a PhD dropout who has lost his way and is living at home because
of his student debt. He has worked with various charities and social groups, but despite being perceived
as brilliant, he has not risen in his career. He sets off a family crisis when, for no apparent reason, he
starts crying as all four men are seated on the couch eating on Christmas Eve.
It is revealed that Matt has given up on being a success, stepping aside for others and is now content to
be ignored and hidden. He can’t shake his feeling of being entitled, and instead begins to destroy
himself. Ed offers him money to pay off his university loans, but he won’t accept help.
Jake describes him best, “Matt’s not negative! He’s not lazy, he’s not lacking in self-confidence, and he’s not
afraid of risk. (To Matt) You believe a guy like you is supposed to sit down and shut the f*** up!”
JAKE
Is also in his forties. He is the alpha male, a successful banker who dominates the room with his physical
presence. He takes care of his looks, by staying fit and dressing snappy – keeping up the image of
‘success’. Jake is recently divorced and has two children, Olivia and Miles. He thinks that the world is
f***ked and that he is a privileged a**hole, which he takes advantage of. He understands Matt’s
reluctance to success and offers the best solution, to leave Matt alone.
DREW
Is the youngest son. He is a university lecturer and a writer. As a teenager he felt a lot of negativity, but
as an adult he has been seeing a therapist and thinks everyone would be better if their confronted their
inner selves. He keeps pushing Matt to discover what’s wrong, almost desperately trying to fix him. He
is nurturing, but doesn’t understand that Matt just wants to be left alone.
STAGE HAND IN CHARGE
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“Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others
simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve
done or failed to do. Access to privilege doesn’t determine one’s outcomes, but it is
definitely an asset that makes it more likely that whatever talent, ability, and
aspirations a person with privilege has will result in something positive for them.”
~Peggy McIntosh
PRIVILEGE
White privilege is a term for societal privileges that benefit people identified as white in Western countries,
beyond what is commonly experienced by non-white people under the same social, political, or economic
circumstances.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege)
For Young Jean Lee, the play, Straight White Men asks the question, “How can these four individuals lead
a moral life given the privilege they share as straight white men? It's the question of, 'What do we want
straight white men to do that they're not doing? And what happens when they do that?”
The three boys have been brought up by their feminist mother, who tried to make them aware of their
privilege, by creating games such as ‘Privilege’, “The game where you have fun, by not having fun.”
The game has cards such as; what I just said wasn't racist/sexist/homophobic because I was joking;
there’s no such thing as white privilege; get stopped by the police for no reason and go directly to jail.
As adults, Matt is the only who opts out of this rigged system, refusing to accept money he hasn’t
earned, or take a successful job. He even takes on the domestic role at home, cooking and cleaning for
his father and is guided by trying not to ‘make things worse.’ Jake says of Matt, “You’re being an ally,
putting yourself in a service position, right? Making copies for the oppressed? You’re trying to live in
accordance with what you believe. That there’s nothing people like us can do in the world that isn’t
problematic of evil, so we have to make ourselves invisible.”
He goes onto explain, “Women and minorities may get to pretend they’re doing enough to make the world
a better place just by getting ahead, but a white guy’s pretty hard-pressed to explain why the world needs
him to succeed.”
Interestingly Lee asked a roomful of women, queer people and minorities, “What do you want straight
white men to do? And what do you want them to be like?” They responded that they wanted someone
who would sit down and shut up. The character of Matt was created using this response and when he
was presented to the students they hated him. Lee said, “I realized that the reason why they hated him
was, despite all their commitment to social justice, what they believed in most was not being a loser. Matt
is exhibiting behaviour that gets attributed to people of colour: not being assertive, not standing up for
himself, always being in a service position."
Jake on the other hand, confesses that he is a white a**shole, “My company’s run almost entirely by white
guys, and I do nothing about it. I make ‘ironically’ racist jokes, I give straight guys s*** about ‘acting gay’, I
talk about which of our interns I want to f***.” He conforms to it and has been successful in his career.
By presenting this character Lee is questioning the fine line between the two characters of Matt and
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Jake and what is the right balance for a straight white man? “When privileged people do make sacrifices
for your benefit, do you care? Do you really want them to do that?”
SUCCESS
Definition of Success:
 The accomplishment of an aim or purpose.
 The attainment of fame, wealth, or social status.
 A person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains fame, wealth, etc.
Each of the boys view success differently. Jake is a successful banker, making lots of money and
conforming to that lifestyle. He was married and has children, but he is recently divorced. Drew is a
successful writer, having won awards for his writing and is teaching at university. He is working on selfimprovement through therapy, but he doesn’t have a girlfriend. Both are successful in their careers and
through this have attained the status of ‘success.’
On the other hand, Matt only works temps jobs, doesn’t have a girlfriend and has moved back home,
taking a back-seat to others. Matt cannot explain his emotional outburst and wants everyone to ignore
it, but a guy shedding tears is too disquieting to be swept under the rug. Matt questions his brothers;
why do I have to be happy? Why is it not enough for me to just be useful?
GUILT
Each of the boys show guilt for who they are and who they’ve become. The boys grew up with a leftwing feminist mother who raised her boys to be aware of privilege. Drew and Matt championed various
diversity in their teenage years, trying to be racially and socially aware.
As an adult, Jake discusses how he’s living in a white male dominated world, where he succumbs to
being racist and sexist to fit-in. As a teenager, Drew built up negativity and anger and tells his family
that he is only now finding himself more balanced emotionally through therapy. Matt has taken his guilt
to the extreme, by stepping back and allowing others to achieve, despite his intelligence.
VIOLENCE
There is violence and cruelty depicted in these male relationships. They know how to antagonize one
another and often feel a need to let off steam. They fight with one another, annoy and tease each other,
demean each other and are aggressive in behavior. They have carried this aggression through from
childhood as they proudly discuss the cruel taunts and their alienation of each whilst they were
growing up; something their Dad doesn’t seem to be aware of.
They also pantomime "the other," dancing freakishly to hip-hop one minute and feigning gay sexual
moves the next. Is this behavior destructive to their relationships; or is it the only way they know how
to show affection for one another?
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NATURALISM
Straight White Men is a naturalistic play. The set and costume design reflect ordinary places and people,
the script is written as linear and naturalistic conversation, and the characters are from a middle-class
background.
Naturalism is an extreme form of realism. The sets are often bland and ordinary and costumes and
props are a reproduction of reality. The characters are often working class and are shaped by their
circumstances and controlled by external forces, such as hereditary of their social and economic
environment. Naturalism also looks at real, often taboo situations but attempts to offer a photographic
reproduction of reality, a ‘slice of life’. The use of distinctly Australian language, colloquialisms and
slang also place this work firmly in the world of realism.
Characteristics of Naturalism
 Is an extreme or heightened form of realism
 Stage time equals real time – eg. three hours in the theatre equals three hours for the characters
in the world of the play;
 Costumes, sets and props are historically accurate and very detailed, attempting to offer a
photographic reproduction of reality;
 Follows rules set out by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, known as ‘the three unities’ - of time,
place and action;
 The action of the play takes place in a single location over the time frame of a single day;
 Jumps in time and/or place between acts or scenes is not allowed;
 Characters are often working class/lower class;
 They regularly explore sordid subject matter previously considered taboo on the stage in any
serious manner (e.g. suicide, poverty, prostitution).
CITIZEN CANE & GEORGE ORSON WELLES
At the end of the play Ed tells Matt, “Orson Welles, he failed many times before he was successful.” To
which Matt replies, “What did Orson Welles ever do?” Angrily Ed replies, “He made Citizen Kane!” The
last line of the play has Matt respond, “What a gift” – suggesting the burden he feels as a straight white
man.
Orson Welles was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and
film. He co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in Citizen Kane (1941), ranked as one of the all-time
greatest films.
Welles was an outsider to the studio system and directed only 13 full-length films in his career. He
struggled for creative control on his projects as his films were either heavily edited or remained
unreleased. Citizen Kane is a quasi-biographical film that examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster
Kane, played by Welles himself. It follows Kane's career in the publishing world that gradually evolves
into a ruthless pursuit of power.
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
Is an 1872 work of dramatic theory by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It deals with the
nature of Greek Tragedy, and how this model can be used to understand the state of modern culture,
both its decline and its possible rebirth. Nietzsche argues for the primacy of the arts over philosophy as
the means for understanding human existence.
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Matt regrets his existence as a straight white man. When he reads for The Birth of Tragedy, he starts it
as a cheerful children’s story, but as he reads, he becomes somber reading, “The best of all things is not
to be born, not to be, to be nothing.”
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Victoria graduated from the South Australian T.A.F.E course for technical
theatre in 1989 and from The University of South Australia with a Visual
Arts degree in 2000. For State Theatre Company, Victoria’s design credits
include Othello, Kryptonite, Maggie Stone, The Glass Menagerie, Speaking in
Tongues, November, Entertaining Mr Sloane, King Lear, Ghosts, Blue/Orange,
Lion Pig Lion, Waiting for Godot, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Metro
Street for its Adelaide and Korean seasons. Other designs include the opera
Undertow for the 2004 Adelaide Festival (which toured to Budapest and
Helsinki) and the concept design and art direction of the Boho Bar on Unley
Road SA. In 2012 she designed The City for NowYesNow at the Bakehouse
Theatre.
In 2010 Victoria was awarded the national inaugural Kristian Fredrikson Scholarship for Design in the
Performing Arts. In 2011, she designed The Business (Belvoir Street Theatre), And No More Shall We
Part (Griffin Theatre Company), Loot (Sydney Theatre Company) She also lectures in Performance
Design at Flinders’ University, and designs a popular line of figurines for the Miniature Gaming industry
through her own company; Victoria Miniatures.
(Set Design: Straight White Men)
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Young Jean Lee writes very specific notes about the set and costume design, pre-show music, curtain
speech and transitions in the play. However, to accommodate the corner configuration of the Space
Theatre and the thrust stage at La Boite’s Roundhouse Theatre, the designer, Victoria Lamb, needed to
condense the layout of Lee’s design.
To do this, she kept the beige/taupe colouring in the walls, carpet and furniture. However, the
bookshelves have become part of a desk, the door to the garage comes through the laundry, storage is in
the laundry and the exercise bike has disappeared due to lack of space. L
Below are Young Jean Lee’s notes on the set design.
A hyper-naturalistic middle-class family room glows invitingly onstage.
The room has wall-to-wall beige carpeting, taupe walls, and minimalist molding. Stage left, a linoleumfloored mudroom leads to a door to the garage. There is a storage bench next to the door, which coats
hanging on pegs above. In front of the storage bench sits an ancient exercise bike. On the other side of the
door is a closet containing a washer and a dryer. Around the corner is a coat closet with a dart board on it.
Centre stage is a taupe leather sofa, a matching easy chair, a dark brown recliner with matching ottoman,
a side table, and a large battered coffee table. The focal point of the furniture is an invisible television
downstage center, whose presence can be felt though it is unseen. Because of this, the wall behind the sofa
is oddly bar – this is the wall that no one lever looks at when they’re in the room. Against this wall are two
matching bookcases packed full of old books, games, puzzles, and a component stereo system. Cabinets in
the bottom of each bookcase store booze and glasses. Stackable clear plastic storage bins sit next to the
shelves.
Stage right is an unused fireplace flanked by two windows. On the fireplace mantle are a hand-crotched,
multi-ethnic Christmas nativity scene and Christmas cards, with stockings hanging above the fireplace. A
small desk sits under the downstage window, its surface covered with Christmas ornaments and
decorations that have been removed from nearby plastic bins.
Upstage left, three carpeted steps lead up and out into a hallway running between the kitchen and living
room, with a door to a half-bath in between.
STAGE HAND IN CHARGE
The stage directions also specify the details for the Stagehand-in-Charge: Is a gender non-conforming
person or woman of colour who introduces the show in their own vernacular and makes several
appearances in traditional moments throughout the play.
Alexis who plays Stagehand-in-Charge starts with acknowledgement of country and then tells the
audience that they will see a naturalistic drama, where the actors will speak in fake American accents,
eat real food and pretend they can’t see us. This role is positioned to cast a ‘black feminist gaze’ over
proceedings.
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1. Humour is used throughout Straight White Men. Discuss the intention of humour and how it
works in the play.
2. The play is said to ‘lead with empathy.’ Discuss.
3. What is the importance of using an Aboriginal woman as the Stagehand-In-Charge?
4. How successful is the play at presenting privilege?
5. Discuss the contrasting roles of Matt and Jake. What qualities do you like/dislike in each and
how do their roles fit into modern society?
6. Discuss the theme of guilt and how it relates to each of the sons.
7. Why do you think Matt ends with the line, “What a gift?”
8. Is Donald Trump the epitome of the privileged straight white man? Discuss his role of privilege
in modern society and whether the views that he holds can be seen as damaging to those less
‘privileged.’
9. Discuss Young Jean Lee’s references to the movie, Citizen Kane and to Nietzche’s The Birth of
Tragedy and how they help develop the story or the characters.
DRAMA QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the naturalistic elements in the text and the staging.
2. What do you think is the role of the loud hip-hop music at the beginning of the performance and
how does it relate to the context of the play?
3. Discuss how the musical elements throughout the play help portray characters and family.
4. Straight White Men is like a sitcom with a dark undertone. Discuss
5. Discuss the role of Matt and how he is portrayed on-stage. How does he conform to the idea of
stepping aside?
6. Choose a social issue that interests you and write a short scene for two characters. Read aloud
with a partner and identify the positives and negatives of structuring this issue into a scene and
whether it helps others understand your viewpoint.
DESIGN
https://www.buzzfeed.com/dayshavedewi/what-isprivilege?utm_term=.rn0VVNjnVD#.icO44PoJ4R
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production elements
performance elements
strengths
impact on audiences
weaknesses
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design role
technique
what did this contribute to the performance?
lighting
music
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www.americantheatre.org/2015/03/24/young-jean-lee-gets-into-the-minds-of-straight-white-men/
www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-young-jean-lee-20151122-story.html
www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/11/17/364760889/in-straight-white-men-a-play-explores-the-reality-ofprivilege
www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-straight-white-men-review-20151124-column.html
http://treetopsreview.tumblr.com/post/144499745702/straight-white-men-by-young-jean-lee-destruction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Jean_Lee
INTERESTING READING
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege
http://www.whiteprivilegeconference.com/white_privilege.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Kane
www.thedramateacher.com/realism-and-naturalism-theatre-conventions/
http://www.enotes.com/topics/birth-tragedy-out-spirit-music
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Tragedy
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